ST. PETERSBURG — Tampa Bay Rays right-hander Drew Rasmussen, a 30-year-old who has undergone three elbow surgeries, has quietly assembled the second-best ERA in Major League Baseball since 2021, trailing only Shohei Ohtani among the 99 pitchers with at least 500 innings in that span.
Rasmussen’s 2.78 ERA across 518 1/3 innings since 2021 sits behind only Ohtani’s MLB-best 2.62 mark. It is better than Chris Sale and Zack Wheeler (2.86 ERA), Max Fried (2.89) and Tarik Skubal (2.95) — names that carry far more national recognition than the Rays starter Tampa Bay acquired at the 2021 trade deadline in the deal that sent Willy Adames to Milwaukee.
Through 13 starts in 2026, Rasmussen has been better than ever. His 2.71 ERA ranks 11th among qualified starters, and he is posting a career-best 27.3 percent strikeout rate alongside a career-low 4.6 percent walk rate. In his most recent outing against the Red Sox, Rasmussen struck out a career-high 13 batters while issuing just one walk across seven scoreless innings. The start before that, he fanned nine Marlins hitters over seven scoreless innings, surrendering just one hit with no walks.
The durability has been the harder part. Rasmussen threw a career-high 150 innings last season — only the second time he has cleared 100 innings — and finished with a 2.76 ERA that earned him his first All-Star selection and a ninth-place finish in American League Cy Young Award voting. His most recent elbow surgery came in July 2023, the third of his career. Outside of a 15 1/3-inning debut in 2020, Rasmussen has never posted a season ERA above three, including marks of 2.84 in both 2021 (76 innings) and 2022 (146 innings).
Rasmussen’s dominance is built on a three-fastball approach that predated the trend now popularized by pitchers like Garrett Crochet, Cam Schlittler and Payton Tolle. He has thrown his four-seamer, cutter and sinker more than 70 percent of the time each season since 2022, and that figure has exceeded 80 percent each year since 2024 — reaching an 81.7 percent clip this season. Since 2025, Rasmussen has struck out 181 batters via fastballs, second only to Crochet’s 183, with Crochet currently on the injured list.
The pitch-by-pitch breakdown since 2025 illustrates why the approach works. His four-seamer, sitting at 96.0 mph, accounts for 32.4 percent usage with 75 strikeouts and a .244 batting average against. His cutter, his most-used pitch this season at 33.3 percent, has held opponents to a .175 batting average and .288 slugging percentage while generating 58 strikeouts. His sinker, at 95.5 mph with 16.1 inches of horizontal break, has been the most devastating offering in 2026 — opponents are batting just .123 with a .169 slugging percentage against it, contributing 48 strikeouts at 22.6 percent usage.
Rasmussen is scheduled to start Tuesday in Los Angeles against the Dodgers, where he will face Ohtani’s club in a matchup of the two pitchers atop that five-year ERA leaderboard.